1. Field of Invention
The present disclosure of invention relates to electro-optic displays. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to an electro-optic display capable of improved image display quality.
2. Description of Related Technology
Recently, as various electronic appliances, such as mobile phones, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), computers and large-scale televisions, have been developed, demands for flat panel displays applicable to the electronic appliances have increased. Further, in the flat panel display area, an e-paper device capable of substituting for real printed paper has been the subject of steadily increasing attention.
Typically, an e-paper type device is fabricated by using an electrophoresis technology that provides a high contrast ratio and has no or minimized dependency on view angles.
Such flat panel displays using electrophoresis technology includes REED devices (Reverse Emulsion Electrophoretic Display, U.S. Pat. No. 5,582,700) developed by Zikon Corporation of California. The REED technology realizes images by interposing electro-optic materials of a non-polar continuous phase and of a polar dispersed phase between upper and lower electrodes, and by applying a voltage between the upper and lower electrodes to thereby control the arrangement of the electro-optic materials of the polar dispersed phase.
However, while the REED device is successful in reflecting external light with high contrast ratio and reducing glare; when it displays an image, the electro-optic materials of the polar dispersed phase are randomly arranged or tend to be moved down toward the lower electrode, thereby exerting a detrimental influence on the aperture ratio of its pixels. The reduced aperture ratio tends to disadvantageously reduce the amount of light transmittance through each pixel and thus the contrast ratio tends to be disadvantageously lowered by this effect.